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Florida Fossil Horse Newsletter Florida Fossil horse Newsletter Volume 9, Number 1, 1st Half 2000 What's Inside? The Good Olde Days at The Thomas Farm ‘Bone Hole’ Thomas Farm’s Slingshot Beast Revealed Toeing the Line New Florida Oreodont Skeletons in Our Closet: The treasures of a museum Book Review - The Bone Hunters: The Heroic Age of Paleontology in the American West The Good Olde Days at The Thomas Farm 'Bone Hole' Since its discovery in 1939, the Thomas Farm fossil site has been excavated by scientists, graduate students, teachers and fossil enthusiasts under the guidance of paleontologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History. It has been the source of many scientific papers, graduate theses, and brilliant ideas on how to teach paleontology in our public schools. The methods of excavation have not changed much, but the people and their individual experiences have produced Scientists excavating the Thomas Farm "Bone Hole" in the 1940s. From left to right a rich history. Some of they are Archie F. Carr, Frank Young, Francis Norman, Buddy Young, Theodor these early diggers, Dr. White, and Marjorie Carr (head at bottom). J.C. Dickinson photo Walter Auffenberg, former Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the FLMNH, Dr. J.C. Dickinson, Director Emeritus of the FLMNH and the late Dr. Archie F. Carr in his book entitled A Naturalist in Florida: A Celebration of Eden, share some of their memories from the days when scientists from Harvard, Drs. Thomas Barbour and Theodore White, were digging the site. Walter Auffenberg dug at Thomas Farm in the 1950s, 1970s and early 1980s. Not much digging occurred at Thomas Farm during the 1960s. His doctoral work was on the fossil snakes of Florida from the Miocene to the Pleistocene. While working on his Ph.D. he would go out to Thomas Farm about once a week, and when he stayed more than a day he camped out in a semi-trailer parked there. To break down the fossiliferous matrix he would bring sediments home and dry the clay on cookie sheets in the oven before washing it through window screen to extract the fossils. He also used to break down the clays by soaking the matrix in gasoline before washing. This method did not require drying, and it was effective in isolating the fossils. Dr. Auffenberg recalled that he only found one skull at Thomas Farm, but what a specimen it was! Until 1999 it reigned supreme as the only Amphicyon intermedius skull in the whole museum. Found during February 1957 it is the type specimen for the species. He recalls that he was digging away with his hunting knife when at some point it went 'clink' when it hit the bone. It took several days to dig it out. While working on the skull his father, who had come out to help, accidentally flung his Masonic ring out with the spoil. The next day Dr. Thomas Farm in the 1950s hardly resembled the sinkhole that it was 18 million years ago. Today much of the fossil-rich matrix has been removed and it once again Auffenberg came back with is a sinkhole. his wife and young son, Walter to work on the Amphicyon skull. Young Walter was answering the call of nature when he saw something gleaming in the sun. He had uncovered his grandfather's ring! Walter Auffenberg was curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Florida State Museum from 1956 to 1959. He remembers when in 1948 the entire VP collection consisted of 3 cabinets, then housed at Flint Hall. During his time as curator he taught Vertebrate Paleontology and took his classes out to Thomas Farm. He put in a grid system of one-meter squares made with metal fence posts. Each bone that was uncovered was mapped in this grid system. When the Harvard bunch first dug Thomas Farm in the 1930s they used a horse and mulescoop to remove overburden and uncover new layers of fossils. This contraption was owned and operated by the appointed caretaker, John Henry Miller, who was living rent-free on the premises in a one-room shack he built with the help of Theodore White from Harvard. Archie Carr wrote, "He used to bring his mule to help Tom Barbour and Ted White dig out fossils at the Thomas Farm over in Gilchrist County northwest of Bell. The Thomas Farm dig had just become known to paleontologists and was being called the best deposit of Miocene fossils east of the Mississippi ... Anyway, Dr. Barbour bought the place for Harvard and the University of Florida and used to come down once in a while to help Ted work it. My wife and I would go out there with them. They would work away with a grapefruit knife for several days, scratching the clay away from the skulls of horses or camels or dier[sic]-wolves that died millions of years ago, and then, when everything the grapefruit knife could reach was out and safely shrouded in plaster, John Henry would bring his mule-shovel and scrape off the overburden until more paydirt lay within reach of the grapefruit knives." Dr. J. C. Dickinson remembers that "John Henry did become a skilled digger and in later years worked alongside all the rest of us." He collected the type specimen of Alligator olseni. According to Dr. Dickinson's account, John Henry and the other local workers not only lacked a spatial geographic knowledge, "they just could not comprehend the age of the bones coming out of the ground. The result was that sort of time shifts were made in referring to the various animals being unearthed. Alligators were no problem, but species such as Amphicyon were simply known as the "Big Dog". One day while the Harvard bunch was at the Thomas Farm dig working In the early 1980s during the week-long summer digs, the rich Thomas Farm matrix on the Amphycion skull was screen-washed in the Santa Fe River. This activity allowed the diggers to cool John Henry and his Uncle off from the scorching summer heat. Leonard were sitting around watching and were discussing what life must have been like when the big dogs were running around in these woods. Archie Carr recalls this delightful conversation in his book: "Uncle Leonard said, 'You reckon there was any folks around here in them days?' 'Sure,' John Henry said. 'There's always been folks around these parts.'Leonard pondered the faraway times for a while, and then he said, 'Well, what kind of a rig you reckon they had to handle a critter like this- yer-un?' John Henry faced him and scornfully spit snuff juice against a clod of blue clay. 'Great God-a-mighty,' he said. 'What you reckon they used them long roffles fer (long rifles)?'" In the 1950s Buddy Vaughn replaced John Henry Miller as caretaker of Thomas Farm. Harvard and the University of Florida put together $2000 to replace the rotting shack that he had inherited. Dr. Auffenberg recalls that the UF had offered to build a toilet, but Buddy said his wife didn’t normally use a toilet and didn’t need one now. A privy was built, however, and in an amusing correspondence to Dr. Alfred Romer, then the Director of the Museum of Comarative Zoology (MCZ) it was mentioned that, "the convenience near the bone hole is being used; although there are suggestions that one of the users may need instructions." It has been generally accepted that the Thomas Farm fossil site was a sinkhole that was at one time a cave. In Dr. Auffenberg's opinion it was a sinkhole that was narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. Bats may have flown in and out of it, but it was not a cave system. When the seawater eventually rose it washed off the neck of the sink. Animals fell in, got trapped and died at the bottom and were covered by clay that was continually washed into the sinkhole during rains and erosion. At the time of its discovery the site was a gently sloped shallow bowl where domestic pigs rooted and gopher tortoises made their burrows. Thomas Farm has an elevation of about 40 feet above sea level. Its environment 18 million years ago probably was much like today's Longleaf Pine-Turkey Oak Sandhill. Erika Simons Thomas Farm's Slingshot Beast Revealed Since Othniel Marsh's day, strange ungulates known as protoceratids have been found exclusively in the North America. In fact, Marsh described the family Protoceratidae in 1891 and since then, more than twenty species of this rare group of animals have been named. Currently believed to be close relatives of the Camelidae, Protoceratids are named after Protoceras celer, an early form with small, knobby cranial protuberances, particularly the beginnings of the two-pronged "slingshot" shaped "horn" just behind its nasal opening. By the time of the early Miocene 18 million years ago, Thomas Farm's Hemingfordian age, protoceratids had already developed this "slingshot". They are represented by Prosynthetoceras texanus, first described from the Garvin Gully of the Texas Gulf Coastal Plain. P. texanus has been noticeably rare compared to Parahippus leonensis and Archaeohippus blackbergi, as are artiodacyls in general at this site. Currently, the artiodactyls (cloven-hoofed mammals related to camels and deer, for example) of Thomas Farm are in need of study, due to the great number of additional specimens collected during the many years of successful Pony Express digs. Prosynthetoceras has a number of characters unique to the family. First is the "horn", which is not a horn at all, but a similar structure known as an ossicone.
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